he lean horse scrambled with
nose to earth and quivering flanks, and the young man, leaning forward
and clinging to his seat as he reeled like one drunken, still murmured
words of encouragement. "Good boy--Goldbug, go it. Good horse, keep it
up."

All at once the way opened out on a jutting crest and made a sharp
turn to the right, and the horse paused on the verge so suddenly that
his rider lost his hold and fell headlong over into a scrub oak that
caught him and held him suspended in its tough and twisted branches
above a chasm so deep that the buzzards sailed on widespread wings
round and round in the blue air beneath him.

He lay there still and white as death, mercifully unconscious,
while an eagle with a wild scream circled about and perched on a
lightning-blasted tree far above and looked down on him.

For a moment the yellow horse swayed weakly on the brink, then feeling
himself relieved of his burden, he stiffened himself to a last great
effort and held on along the path which turned abruptly away from the
edge of the cliff and broadened out among low bushes and stunted
trees. Here again the horse paused and stretched his neck and bit off
the tips of the dry twigs near him, then turned his head and whinnied
to call his master, and pricked his ears to listen; but he only heard
the scream of the eagle overhead, and again he walked on, guided by an
instinct as mysterious and unerring as the call of conscience to a
human soul.

Good old beast! He had not much farther to go. Soon there was a sound
of water in the air--a continuous roar, muffled and deep. The path
wound upward, then descended gradually until it led him to an open,
grassy space, bordered by green trees. Again he turned his head and
gave his intelligent call. Why did not his master respond? Why did he
linger behind when here was grass and water--surely water, for the
smell of it was fresh and sweet. But it was well he called, for his
friendly nicker fell on human ears.

A man of stalwart frame, well built and spare, hairy and grizzled, but
ruddy with health, sat in a cabin hidden among the trees not forty
paces away, and prepared his meal of roasting quail suspended over the
fire in his chimney and potatoes baking in the ashes.

He lifted his head with a jerk, and swung the quail away from the
heat, leaving it still suspended, and taking his rifle from its pegs
stood for a moment in his door listening. For months he had not heard
the sound of a